CineQuest, San Jose’s premier film festival, may have ended in May, but that doesn’t mean cinephiles have to wait a whole year for more filmic gems. CineQuest’s new all-virtual younger sibling, CineJoy, is bringing features and shorts from around the world straight to the home with an all-new streaming platform built just for film festivals. There are multiple ways to experience the festival: viewers can buy a pass to live Spotlight events featuring screenings, remarks and Q&As with creators, or can buy tickets to on-demand viewings of any of the generous 75 features or 85 shorts.

Cinejoy
Opens Thu, Various Times, $3.99+
Virtual Event

Cinequest returns with an opening night screening of Manto, a new biopic about controversial and acclaimed Indian writer Saadat Hasan Manto. Directed by Nandita Das, the film is set in an India just breaking free from British rule. While optimism fills the air, violence, unrest and fear are also rampant as the country seeks a post-colonial identity. The Indian-born Manto wrote novels, essays, short stories and plays—mostly in Urdu—and gained a reputation for his social criticism and unflinching portrayal of Indian life. Das will speak at the screening. The $55 ticket includes the film and an after party.

Cinequest Opens
Tue, 7:15pm, $20+
California Theatre, San Jose

Haunted by a vision of a vanished girlfriend, Jamie (Sam Keeley) searches the remote foothills of the Himalayas for her, lured by various clues to a guru with a glorious wooden palace in the pines.

Chandra (Melissa Leo) the blissed-out disciple of the guru claims no knowledge of the lady in question. Then Jamie starts to get clues from Nitin (Kal Penn) that someone isn’t telling the truth. Mountain View-bred filmmaker Ben Rekhi cooks up haunting atmosphere that dispels when the story changes course in the third act—what starts out like Laura ends up as Doctor Strange, and, worse, The Celestine Prophecy.

Still: Penn’s explanation of why he decides to help—“It’s the right thing to do”—is the kind of straightforward exposition that filmmakers too often avoid. The scenery is splendid, and it’s always worthwhile to see this much of the Oscar-winning Leo (The Fighter);  usually responsible for ten or fifteen great minutes in a movie, Leo gets a chance to be alternately warm and ominous.

The Ashram
Tue, Mar 6, 4:45pm, HAM | Fri, Mar 9, 2pm, RWC

Luba is a poorly paced dramatic thriller that aims to remind us that parents are humans too.

Nicole Maroon gives a great performance as the title character—a single mother struggling to make ends meet. Without any savings or higher education, she is forced to move between odd jobs while trying to co-parent with her addict husband, Donnie, portrayed by the film’s writer and producer, Vladimir Jon Cubrt.

The film’s pacing is sporadic, making it hard to follow each character’s development throughout the story—especially for Luba. Sure, we see her financial strife and complicated relationship with Donnie, but we aren’t given a singular conflict that we can see her overcome. And while we know she only wants what’s best for her son, Matty, she isn’t given much more for us to empathize with.

The same can be said of Donnie. As a relapsed addict who is unable to put his family ahead of his substance abuse, the audience is supposed to view him as the film’s antagonist. But we aren’t given enough time with him to humanize him or understand his true motivations. This leads to a weak climax that feels unsatisfying and predictable.

It’s only from the point of view of Matty—an impressionable young boy in a heartbreaking situation—that we can begin to empathize with the adults. He is tired of the lies told by his parents, but the audience understands the illusion Luba and Donnie need to maintain in order to protect their son. Luba shows us that, in the end, parents are just kids trying to figure it all out.

Luba
Mon, Mar 5, 9:15pm, HAM | THU, Mar 8, 4:50pm, RWC 10 | Fri, Mar 9, 7:15pm, RWC 10

Set in the woods during a cold, Michigan winter, Frank Olsen (Marshall Cook) has started a new life, eschewing society in favor of a solitary existence. But that all comes crashing down while he is out hunting one day and sees a mysterious man dumping a body in the forest. It turns out this body isn’t quite cold yet. Upon further investigation, Frank discovers a woman fighting for her life. He picks up the unconscious woman and brings her back to his cabin.

The film quickly turns into a game of stalking, as Frank begins tailing the mysterious man (Joe Raffa) all over a small Michigan town, trying to discover who he is and why he nearly killed this woman. He keeps a close eye on the man and by the end of the day, they meet inside of a bar. In an awkward conversation that quickly escalates, the two stand outside the bar smoking cigarettes as Frank invites the stranger to come out and hunt in his land.

Dialogue is minimal in the film. Most of the story is told through the character’s expressions and the situations they find themselves in. It is a credit to the cast and direction that the story is easy to keep up with and remains riveting, even without much in the way of a script.

Cook’s portrayal of Frank is masterful. For the duration of the film, the viewer is left in a state of suspense. Driving around town in his green pick up truck, pulling out a pistol every now and then, we wonder whether Chekhov’s rule about guns will hold true here.

As for the mystery man, Lance Bennett: he’s not so easy to figure either. Over the course of the film, we watch him go through a rollercoaster of emotions. He has a short temper, but in minutes goes back to his normal self. Lance goes through an odd amount of activities over the course of the day, as Frank follows right behind him. He follows so closely that it’s almost unrealistic for Lance to not once notice him and his pickup truck.

The cold, snowy weather gives off the right winter setting. The streets seem empty, giving all focus to the two characters during the different scenes. The day also seems to fly by, in a short span of time everything turns pitch black.

With a mix of drama, thrill, and suspense one is still left with questions at the end. (JR)

Hunting Lands

Sat, Mar 3, 5:50pm, RWC | Mon, Mar 5, 6:15pm, RWC | Wed, Mar 7, 5:00pm, CAL | Sat, Mar 10, 7:35pm, 3B

Bikini Moon is a provocative, multilayered mockumentary that highlights the worst parts of millennial liberalism.

Condola Rashad gives an awe-inspiring, performance as the film’s titular character, Bikini Moon Davis—a black, homeless war veteran battling mental illness. She is picked up as the subject of a documentary by a group of young filmmakers looking to score quick fame at an independent film festival. The crew puts her on path toward recovery, but only in a way that benefits their own narrative.

Bikini is charismatically unreliable—as a friend, a film subject and the story’s central character. She’s a Lady Lazarus kind of character, keeping everyone—including the audience—captivated by her self-destructive behavior.

Two supporting characters—Trevor and Kate—are a young couple seething with privilege and white guilt. Trevor, the crew’s director, who is only willing to help Bikini so long as he gets something in return. In contrast, Kate is naive and almost addicted to helping others, even when it hurts her in the end. The couple represent different ends of white, millennial liberalism. In the end, both are pushed to their limits by the reality of Bikini’s situation.

Director Milcho Manchevski presents all of this through of variety of viewpoints—including the all-too-familiar lens of a mobile device. Captured with a changing New York—battling hipsters and gentrification—Bikini Moon is a modern experience that taps into the ugliness of our voyeuristic culture.

Bikini Moon
Sat, Mar 3, 4:45pm, 3B | Sun, Mar 4, 4:00pm, 3B | Tue, Mar 6, 9:30pm, RWC 2 | Sat, Mar 10, 9:00pm, RWC 2

Director and writer Owen Long takes his audience on an uncomfortably gripping journey in Seeds, a story about the monstrous manifestation of inner demons. Marcus Milton is a drug-addicted man, infatuated with his much-younger niece. After a serious bender, which leaves one body in its wake, Marcus seeks refuge in his old family home on the New England coast.

But even in this idyllic and peaceful setting, he can’t escape his past. Marcus has hardly settled in when his brother unexpectedly drops off his daughter, Lily, and son, Spencer, to stay while he and his wife work on their marriage. Lily, Marcus’ niece, is unable to keep her own sexual impulses at bay. Throughout the film, Marcus is haunted by dreams of a younger Lily on the beach.

To make matters worse, Marcus’s drug dealer shows up unannounced—and that’s not even accounting for the giant, hermit crab-like monster that is lurking in the shadows. The monster, it seems, is both a metaphor for Marcus’ unseemly desires, as well as for Lily’s dangerous attraction to her uncle.  As we come to learn, the creature has been a part of both character’s lives for some time before they are thrust together by fate in this troubled house.

More bodies pile up as the monster grows larger and bolder. This morbid and fantastical psychological thriller finds no easy answers, as it explores the psyche of a societal pariah and a troubled teenage misfit.

Seeds
Sat, Mar 3, 9:30pm CAL | Sun, Mar 4, 2:30pm RWC 3 | Mon, Mar 5, 3:15pm RWC 10 | Fri, Mar 9, 9:00pm RWC 18

Cinequest wraps up this weekend with personal appearances by director Walter Hill, actress Jane Lynch, Garbo on the big screen at the 90 year old California Theater, and a just-announced appearance by Fred Armisen.

SNL vet Armisen’s best-known starring vehicle is Portlandia, a rubber joke-shop dagger aimed at the heart of the hipster. TV’s Portlandia defined so much alterna-culture, from compulsory man-bun to compulsive artisanal pickling. Such baseball as The Rose City has today—RIP, the Portland Beavers—is because of a collegiate-league team called the Portland Pickles, in honor of a Portlandia sketch. In various wigs and guises, Armisen excels as a forlorn beta male in America’s most studiously tolerant town

Lynch is similarly best-known for her Emmy-winning appearance as the head meanie in charge on TV’s Glee. And artsy action director Hill helmed cult classic The Warriors and the ahead-of-its-time The Driver, a key influence on the Ryan Gosling-starring Drive. There’s a special place in movie Valhalla for B movies that are a lot better than they have to be, and Hill’s newest, The Assignment, is one such flick. Michelle Rodriguez brings a surprising amount of power and feeling to this story of a gunman given an involuntary sex change by a villain. Likely, it’s not for the cisgendered to defend this movie, which has been attracting some Internet flack. But it needs defense: it’s not at all about transgenderism, and it is all about pulp fiction.  

Also wrapping up the last weekend of Cinequest is Che and T, Tanuj Chopra’s comedy “about the only two brown [Desi, in this case] dudes in the Silicon Valley who have nothing to do with technology.” Sunkrish Bala of The Walking Dead and Dominic Rains of A Girl Walks Alone At Night as a pair of underachievers who misadventure their way through the hazards of their jobs, until family ties force them to man up.

Similarly, The Dunning Man, written and directed by Michael Clayton, features a loser (James Carpinello) given a job chasing money. He’s a rent collector at an Atlantic City apartment building, tangling with various weirdos: a pair of Chechnian gangster/furries who own a live tiger; a profane rapper (Langston Fishburne, Laurence’s son); and an attractive downstairs neighbor (Dawn Lyen-Gardner). Clayton’s eye is sharp, and his speed is admirable, but it’s time to retire the device of hypertextual titles describing the characters, accompanied by a typewriter clacking sound (we ain’t watching Divorce Court here).

More trouble in a resort town: Ramsey Davison’s documentary, What Happened in Vegas, is a first person account of the trouble he faced when he reported witnessing the brutality of LVPD officers.

At the first Shorts program, familiar faces include Marion Ross of Happy Days, Emily Mortimer (the upcoming Mary Poppins Returns) and Lili Taylor (Short Cuts, The Addiction). The order of the programming is smart—it juxtaposes two shorts about insurgent Islam, in which children are the pawns. In Pakistan (The School Bag by Dheeraj Jindal) and Palestine (Pierre Dawalibi’s Today They Took My Son) different sides of the Muslim/Infidel violence are analyzed; Jindal takes a view of a tragedy from the soft interior views of a home, while Dawalbi captures the mania in the streets occupied lands. Sadly, neither one really worked, despite their value and seriousness.

Best in show by a mile—one of the best in the fest—is the Iranian short Limbo by Iran’s Ghasideh Golmakani. Describing it makes it sound like yet another actor’s exercise: two men sort of trapped in a room. A colossally obese elder is being tattooed by a young, skeptical kid on a hot day; the fat man’s body is already inked, covered with the names of people he knew that were killed. It’s as if this stranger were swollen like a tick from all the blood he spilled, or perhaps he’s an evil spirit, materialized to intone the horror of war. Today, we generally know too much about a movie before we see it. Cinequest proves it’s still possible to discover a film, to walk in on something startling and new.

Fred Armisen
Mar 11, 12pm, $15
California Theatre, San Jose

Downtown San Jose has done a lot of growing up in the past two years. Since 2013, the city has enjoyed a growing craft-cocktail scene—with the combined opening of 55 South, SP2 and Paper Plane. Great beer is everywhere: just head to the recently transformed Good Karma, ISO Beers, or the newly expanded Original Gravity. And we haven’t even gotten to SoFA yet.

With the promise of a brand new alternative rock club—helmed by Blank Club co-founder Corey O’Brien—the upscale libations and smooth house music of The Continental, all the great jazz and indie music at Cafe Stritch, and the regularly on-point hip-hop shows at Back Bar and Agenda Lounge, the South First Street Area is beginning to look like the Once and Future King of music and nightlife in San Jose.

It sure fit that bill last Friday, when this intrepid arts editor found himself bouncing between a Cinequest red carpet event featuring New Girl star Hannah Simone at The California Theatre, the incredible virtuosity of the Charnett Moffett NeTTwork trio at Stritch, a genre-melding solo performance by DJ-producer-pianist-vocalist Taylor McFerrin, who kicked of San Jose Jazz Winterfest at The Continental, and wrapping up the night by dancing to a blistering set from underground Bay Area hip-hop icon, Andre Nikatina.

So, if you don’t know, now you know. Be sure to keep an eye on the SoFA district in the coming weeks and months. It’s the new place to be. And if you missed out on this weekend’s action, check out the photos:

Hannah Simone walked the Cinequest red carpet prior to the screening of her new film ‘Miss India America.’ Photo: Greg Ramar.